Tuesday, November 2, 2010

More On Inafune's Resignation

The lengthy interview where Keiji Inafune announced his resignation from Capcom has been translated into English courtesy of the NeoGaf community.

Although the biggest draw of the interview are his reasons for leaving Capcom, he did offer a few words related to Rockman. You can find those specific portions after the break, however for the complete interview, you'll have to check out this thread here.

Inafune: "Up until now, for better or worse, I couldn't go beyond being "Inafune from Capcom." That was a rather large problem, and I also experienced awhile ago that when the results were good, it was thanks to Capcom, thanks to Rockman. It wasn't just in the company saying so, but all of the players as well. (laughs) Capcom, you know, Rockman, you know. But when it was bad, of course it was, "What are you doing, Inafune? Don't screw it up!" This too, was said both by people in the company and by players"

"After I leave Capcom, if a Biohazard or Rockman title doesn't sell, there's the proof [that something sells because it was made by Keiji Inafune]. Time goes by very quickly, but in maybe 3 years or so... I can't really say, maybe sooner than that, I'd like to have my proof."

4Gamer: I wonder if Rockman Dash 3 will be okay...

Inafune: Looking at the timing, the team members, and the planning done, Rockman Dash 3 is finally on its way. I really didn't want to quit right now... But I can't do it anymore. My will to continue has run out. That's why I had to leave Capcom and strengthen my resolve, as I wanted to help finish working on it from the outside but was unable to."

4G: As you mentioned before, if Rockman sells because Inafune made it, it won't make it out. But if Rockman sells because it's Rockman, the project will survive.

KI: That's exactly right. For Capcom, it doesn't matter whether a game has the Inafune brand or is made by some anonymous producer. That's ultimately why I made the decision to leave. It's sad to leave, proving that point. It was really sad.

======

There's MUCH more to this interview so if you want to stay in the loop, check it out in full.

While we're on the subject of Inafune's resignation, Capcom Japan has come forth with a statement of their own:

"Due to the sudden upheaval in the market, it seemed necessary to drastically reform our game development structure," Capcom stated at a recent financial meeting. "During restructuring preparations, Inafune made a request to continue working in the role of a game creator."

As it turns out, Inafune wanted to create his own subsidiary company in an effort to have a more hands-on approach to game design (think Kojima Productions). Capcom turned down this proposal and shortly after, Inafune resigned.

The details on his resignation can all be found within this interview. Do give it a read when you've got a chance; it's quite the eye opener.

14 comments:

Poor Inafune, now I understand why he left. Fans can be really annoying at times, and there will always be people that like and dislike something, but the ones that dislike can be very bashful and it's a letdown. Heck, there are people that don't even like games. It's easier to say what is bad than say what is good.

Take Mega Man Universe as sample, it is still in development and many people are saying it's bad. Want to know what a bad game really is? Go play the CD-i Zelda games and Superman 64!

Wow.....really good read. He definitely is speaking from the heart on there. I can see a lot of his points about how the Japanese game industry is lagging behind.

It's true what he's saying about salary men. Basically the entire drive in a young Japanese man's life is to make it into a company where you can ride out the rest of your life because you don't have to worry about being fired. It's the equivalent of working for the government in America. But in both jobs, the kind of attitude that whether you succeed or fail doesn't matter only leads to complacency and an overall poor job performance.

While I typically prefer Japanese games over American ones, I can see a lot of what he's saying, that American games tend to cater more to their audiences. We wonder so many times why Company X doesn't make Game Y when the fans are wanting it so bad....it's because Company X is more worried about meeting a certain bottom line than pleasing it's fanbase. If Game Z sells better than Game Y, then they're gonna make Game Z over and over and over until it stops being a big seller.

To bring this home, I'm surprised Legends 3 ever saw the light of day. I can only imagine that it was the last of Inafune-san's efforts at the company. As I've said before, it makes sense to push it now, with the 3DS being a new system, thus a smaller pool of games to choose from and a higher likelihood of success. It just really saddens me that Capcom couldn't swallow its pride and allow Inafune-san to continue working on the project as a contractor.

I really feel for him, to work at Capcom for 23 years and put in his resignation, yet no one in upper management shows they care about losing him.....that's gotta be rough. I think that really shows how messed up their priorities are when they don't sweat the loss of such a brilliant mind.

and he is so right, there's a lot of people here who love rockman just because it's rockman and I really think that the best rockman games came from him

yes, I will buy Rockman dash 3 even if the game is made without inafune but it will be my last rockman game that I will grab. I'm not interested in the future rockman titles (including Megaman «failure» universe and rockman «WTF» online)

HIs company was the worst in the handheld divison tho. Zero was great.ZX was fuckn' horrid. ZX advent wasn't much better. Don't think he had anything to with starforce but if he did yikes, he needed to go.

"No Rockman game without inafune" - what an unintelligent, illogical way of thinking. As if Rockman were the first series to ever have to continue without its original creator, or if all series that did so automatically failed. Not surprising that you irrationally label Universe and Online as failures before they've even released.

"HIs company was the worst in the handheld divison" - Battle Network is one of the best selling MegaMan series ever. And have you heard of Monster Hunter? A tremendously successful series whose most relevant entries - about half of them in total - are on the PSP.

MMZ,ZX and SF were a failure, there is no problem if Inafune quit capcom, the serie is not from one man, it's so ridiculous........Capcom can do new classic and X game now, i wait the Rockman Online =)

My point is that people did not automatically start hating Universe as soon as Inafune resigned. If that was the case, then that would be blatant fanboyism. Then again, it wouldn't be the first time it happened, since Mega Man X6 gets a lot of hate for that exact reason.

I think I feel where he's coming from, and I can definitely relate a bit more now that I know that Capcom hires all of it's employees for life.. That's kinda crazy, being an American, where one is lucky to hold a job for 2 years or more. (And that's just the average of 'if you like your job'!)

I can see where the half-assed games come from now. None of these producers are going to lose their jobs if a game sucks- they aren't at fault for anything and still get paid. I've been complaining about Capcom's half-assed game making ways for years (X collection: 'nuff said)! This just brings that point to light even more for me.

However, another part of me (the rabid X fangirl) is elated by the fact that he is gone. The X games haven't really been "X" games, they've been more "Zero and his wacky sidekick X!" .. and then Axl is kinda like Tails, only for the X series, 'Sonic' and 'Knuckles' were the first 'pair' and then 'Tails' came in later instead of the other way around; either way they all share similarities to each other.

In this case though, Inafune is kinda like Sephiroth and his Dark Materia, the X series being 'Holy'. There were no X games for the past few years, and if there were, Inafune's involvement was slim to none (he flat out refused to be part of Command Mission; and look at that; Zero was GONE for over half the game), any hope of seeing X in one of the cross overs (TvsC, MvsC3, etc) was dashed in favor of Zero or EXE, etc. Now that Inafune is gone, 'Holy' can begin to work.. AKA, Capcom can start listening to the X fans that are sick of the Zero pie and want some more of the X/everybody ELSE pie. Hopefully, they'll listen.